Snowy Kiss
by lotuskasumi
Summary: Being lost is easy to fix, but being alone is irremediable. T for violence/body horror, slight language. (From a prompt on Tumblr: "prompt: an angst, or hurt/comfort, whouffaldi fanfic? maybe including overprotective!twelve, but that's not necessary uwu.") (Whouffle/Twelve x Clara)


_"You mustn't let yourself get separated from it anymore, or show it to others so easily. […] Don't worry, I'll protect you." _

— Hotaru Tomoe, _Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, _Act 35.

* * *

"... An entire race of alien creatures who suck out the souls of innocent people and turn their bodies into hosts."

"Yes, that would be the definition of a Seeleech, Clara."

"Soul suckers," Clara repeated, narrowing down the particularly glaring, damning, and downright unsettling aspect of this conversation. _Or one of them_, she amended silently, folding her arms across her chest. "Body snatchers. In a word, 'hostile.'"

The Doctor continued to fiddle with knobs and levers and switches, keeping his gaze trained onto Clara as he waited the next part of her sentence. Nice of him to sense there was more coming, though she noticed there was a rigid air moving through his own face, sealing itself over his motions, to make him appear as wooden and rudely mechanic as automaton.

"Remarkably hostile," the Doctor added when Clara's silence and all its judgmental weight had grown into an almost uncomfortable third presence in the console room. Fourth, if you counted the ever-present sentience of the TARDIS. "I'm glad you're appreciating the gravity of the situation."

Clara tapped her fingers against the sides of her arms in quick succession, leaning against the far side of the console, positively glaring at the Doctor with as much force as she could muster. "Just one question, Doctor."

He flicked one last switch and lowered both hands to a flat surface of the panels, steadying himself against it. "Yes?"

"Why the hell are we going there?" She would have phrased this with a bit more color, perhaps an angrier pair of words or two, but her time as a teacher had trained Clara to reduce the nastier bits of her vocabulary into shorter phrases that still brought home the point. The Doctor, however, seemed impervious to both her Siberian glare or the similar ice-cold cast of her tone. Either that or he'd become rather skilled at hiding it.

"We were invited," he said at last, offering the explanation as simply as one might pass along the answer to a far more inane question. So casual. So simple.

So infuriating. Would she ever get used to this strange, new man? Clara had hoped so, before this moment at least. "What, they just rang you up out of the blue?" she asked, waving her hand at him, at the console, at the phone she knew was located somewhere in the vicinity.

_Perhaps he got rid of it_, a cold voice hissed from the back of her doubts, making her throat seize up. _He's changed so much already - not just his face, either. Everything about him is different now_. Clara took a quick peek at the walls surrounding the console, once so barren, so bare, utterly sterile. There were shelves dominating every surface now, all loaded with books in languages Clara had never seen before. But that wasn't all: the room had proper furniture now. Tables, a winged armchair, even low lights, no longer just a sickly pale green cast that emanated from all around - the entire console room was transformed with the appearance of an office or a sort of intellectual's comforting retreat.

And yet that only made Clara feel all the more uneasy. _It feels like a home_, she thought, holding her arms tighter around herself as she moved her eyes to the Doctor. _It feels just like home, but it's too..._ What was the word? She needed a word, but they were all out of her grasp now. She reached in vain, but every choice turned to ash and withered on her tongue, going unsaid.

If the Doctor knew what sort of tempest was going on inside Clara's head at that moment, he kept up a beautiful appearance of utter ignorance. Her heart turned into a sour, bitter thing at the thought. _Can he not even see me anymore?_ "As a matter of fact yes, they did call me," the Doctor said, his words growing into a quicker pace as his eyes took in her stance, her expression, the absolute air of disapproval emanating from her.

"Is that what you do now? Give terrible monsters your number?" she asked. _Don't answer that,_ she added, silently.

_Please answer that_, she amended, again in silence, chewing on her lower lip. _Tell me something. Give me a reason to go. Give me a reason to stop_.

"I suppose I do," he said, his voice somber, the sort of tone one could call funereal and be terribly, achingly accurate instead of merely dramatic. "Pity one beat me to it and got to you first," he added.

Clara unfolded her arms and stared at him, not understanding. _Is it him he's talking about? The old him, the other him - ?_ But that was, in a sense, still him. Different man, different voice, different everything - but the essentials were still there.

Weren't they?

Clara looked down and began to pull at a broken bit of her left ring finger's nail. She didn't see the look on the Doctor's face as he took her in. If she had, she might have guessed he was wondering the same about her.

* * *

The Seeleech were a frightful sight - emaciated, humanoid in shape, with red diamond-shaped eyes that never seemed to blink or move off of Clara and the Doctor's faces as they sat in silence on the other side of the table - but they brewed a nice pot of tea. That helped, just a bit. And it helped a little more that the tea set was so odd - pretty porcelain cups and saucers, but the pot itself was a hard, black iron affair, decorated with the shapes of diamonds.

_Don't get too comfortable here_. Clara reminded herself of what the Doctor had first told her about them, disrupting the ease that this pacifying thought tried to plant inside her mind. _Soul suckers. Body thieves. They carve out what they want from a person and push themselves inside._

Clara shivered and lowered the teacup that had been handed to her back down to its little saucer. It was covered in strange red lilies, all spindly and bent like spider legs. That did nothing to soothe her.

Habit made her look at the Doctor, though this no longer brought her any comfort as it once had. She felt only all the more aware of the space wedged between them, all the more conscious of that darkness she saw inside his eyes. _Those big sad eyes_. Everything about him was sad now, but mixed in with just enough biting bitterness that Clara could no longer reach out her hand to comfort him without first wondering if it was no different than offering her arm to a starving hound.

From her position at the Doctor's right, Clara could only see a sliver of those new eyes. So pale, so cold, like ice - hadn't someone warned her about that once, earlier? _There's a sliver of ice in his heart._ The ice was everywhere now, encasing him utterly, locking her out - or in? Clara couldn't know. She didn't know how to ask.

She tried to focus on the essentials. The soothing tea. The ease with which the Doctor conversed with the Seeleech. The fact that neither of them had been attacked or in any way threatened, apart from being in the presence of questionable company. These were scraps of comfort, things Clara could work with - though she couldn't understand how it had ever come to this. She wanted to trust him, and at the same time didn't like that she had to question the need to trust him at all. She never had this problem with a friend before, never had this problem with people who toed the line of more than friends but not quite happy with the other title, because Clara didn't keep those people around for long.

So why him? What made him so different?

Once upon a time, with that old face that had been so new, so different, so charming and - _don't say it!_ - so... liked, Clara thought she had the answer. But as she gazed at this new him in silence, her heart falling further down inside her chest so that it came to rest in a bed of bitter, frightened thorns, Clara could no longer find the words to explain it.

She lowered her eyes to the hands clenched in her lap, but if she had kept her gaze up for a few seconds more she would have noticed two utterly crucial things: the way the Seeleech turned to study her, breathing in softly as if tasting the air of her sudden doubt, and the convulsive way the Doctor's body shifted closer to her, like a compass point bending to attend to the reach of its mate.

If Clara kept her eyes up for a few seconds more, she would have seen the way the Doctor's hand began to reach for hers. It was an instinctive gesture born not from habit but from a constant, consistent awareness that there was something to protect, something to hold onto, something - some_one_ - who deserved all the comforts one could offer.

Even if his touch was already so stained and soaked.

Even if his touch would only throw her heart further into the little bed of needles that both pained and pleased.

But all Clara saw was the sudden fist he made instead, and the clenching of his jaw that made his face look both terrible and terrified.

* * *

As the Doctor had no problem shaking hands with the Seeleech when their time was up, Clara felt she had no reason to be afraid. At least, no reason to show it. She put her hand into theirs, gave it a prompt, quick shake, and then removed her hand as quickly as she could.

Their touch was cold and firm, bloodless, frozen. An ice-clad thing.

Clara wondered if that's why the Doctor didn't like being touched now. There were too many things she could compare him to now, and none of them pleasant.

* * *

"A fine companion you've made, Doctor. Bring her back soon."

"You don't want to get greedy now," he said. The words were flat and his gaze was empty, but his brain was afire and the thoughts were racing faster than he could pin them down to any sort of emotion or inspiration. They were just there, fluttering and shrieking and darting about like mad, waiting for their turn to speak. He kept them silent. He had to, he would.

The pair of them - both alien, both silent - watched Clara shove open the door to the TARDIS and walk further into the darkness inside. She didn't look back. She didn't hesitate. She didn't hold the door open, either. The Doctor heard it shut and felt a similar slam resonate somewhere inside his chest, lodged between both hearts.

"Is a Time Lord not enough? Got to have the companion, too?" he asked, half a challenge, half a sincerely curious question. He couldn't understand them. He wasn't sure he felt like it. But until they gave him a reason to react, either out of self-defense or the defense of someone far greater, the Doctor would maintain this air of polite conversation. _Just an air. Just an appearance. Nothing sincere about it, really._

The Seeleech turned their dark crimson gaze on the Doctor and hissed once more. It was a mournful, weak sound that reminded him of all the rattling breaths he'd heard before the stillness settled in. "There's no use for you," they said to him, their lips pulling back to reveal pointed teeth crammed inside black, swollen gums. They clicked with every word like knives clattering on bone. "There's no heart left."

"There's two, I think you'll find."

"No. Not even one. None." The Seeleech moved slowly, turning their eyes and head back to the TARDIS. The Doctor could feel Clara just behind the doors, could sense her hand reaching out for the handle and then falling back down again, a dance back and forth between wanting and not wanting to want at all.

"But _her_... Well, that's different." the Seeleech continued, holding up their hand, the one that had shaken Clara's. The Doctor peered at it quickly, watched with mute appreciation as the long, bone-thin fingers curled inward on the palm as if capturing something inside the cage of thin flesh and aged, aching muscle. "So much heart and no place to put it."

"She can keep it," the Doctor said. "It's hers after all. Why would she want to hand it off to someone else?"

"Says the man who didn't know what he held."

* * *

"Why did you take me there?"

He had a reason, but there didn't seem to be a way to put it into words. Not quite. Not yet. That was new. "Because you were here." That was, at least, part of it. 'Because you were here and I needed you,' would've been a bit closer to the full truth.

But Clara didn't know this, and so his words had stung. "What if I had asked you not to? What if I had told you - flat out demanded - not to go?"

"Then I wouldn't have. But you didn't. Missed your chance."

"I shouldn't have to." Clara's hand reached for the latch and pulled the door open. This time she did look back, just once, a gaze as cold as the tombs around his hearts. "Soul suckers. Body snatchers. _Monsters_. Not friends. You should know better by now, Doctor."

That stung, too, but the Doctor hid it better. "Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No." Clara turned away. She looked at her hand, at the one the Seeleech had shook. It was pale, death pale, and if she turned it over to the front she could see right down through to the veins coiling beneath. Clara closed her eyes, shook her head. "I'm just cold."

And that scared them both.

* * *

There was a cloud in her dream, a bleak terrible haze that lowered itself around her until it was as isolating and absolute as a coffin. No light, no air, not a single scrap of comfort offered itself to her. Clara was alone, utterly and entirely.

She curled closer into herself, drawing her knees up to her chest as she folded her arms over her ribs. Just another cage for her heart. Being alone is just as bad as being lost. It was the same, in a way. Only one was a hell that was easier to escape - all it took was the right person at the right time, with just enough kindness in their heart to stop and care.

Being lost is easy to fix, but being alone is irremediable.

When Clara opened her eyes she saw what could have been cinders falling all around her, small wisps of light that burnt out just as her hands reached out to claim them, to keep them warm and safe and close. Sparks with no flint to keep them lit, no tinder to act as inspiration for a warmer, larger blaze. No light, no life, no warmth or heart or love at all.

Clara held herself closer, her nails catching on her bare skin. She shivered, her teeth clenched, and shut her eyes. Open or shut, all she saw was darkness. What did it matter if she looked? There was nothing to see. Nothing there for her. Nothing at all, really.

_There's a sliver of ice in his heart._

Clara opened her eyes and looked for the first time at her hands. The one on the left was all right - nothing unusual or suspect about it. She curled the fingers into a loose fist then released it, admiring the opalescent gleam of the nails, the little tears and breaks that acted as the most damning evidence of her nervous habit.

_I should stop biting them_. But she couldn't seem to keep on top of her own vices.

What did it matter if she slipped up? No one else was getting hurt by it. No one else at all. Just her.

She looked at her other hand. She could admire this, too, even though what she saw was a horror.

A bloodless, pale blue case of crystal ice, half scab and half shell, was growing steadily over her finger tips. Clara watched in mute horror as it moved further up over her knuckles, and across the hidden veins so alive and thriving with blood, until the ice carapace had sealed her entire hand. The prisms threw back her image dozens of times over in smaller and more hideous distortions, but they all shared the same mingled expression. Sorrow, shock, regret.

Clara tried to bend this frozen hand into a fist, but the motion would not complete. This one small part of own body couldn't obey. She could still move the arm, however. A small comfort, that. So she forced it to curl back over her chest and press against the ache she felt rising up from her heart. The chill of her own touch seeped down into her skin, making her shiver again, and when Clara opened her eyes once more she saw the smallest of red jewels sitting in the palm of her frozen hand. A little tether was knotted around the jewel, a bloody red cord that disappeared somewhere beneath her ribs on the left side of her chest. All her attention was focused on the way the gem seemed to tremble inside her own touch, like a flower bud swaying in the breeze that precedes a storm.

A voice from the darkness called out, _The human heart, like the love it sheds, is an infernal device just about indestructible. _And Clara thought she recognized it from somewhere, a voice like a hiss of air that leaks out from clenched teeth, the universal sound of pain too much to bear.

_There's a sliver of ice in his heart..._

_But what about mine?_ Clara wondered as she watched the red jewel grow very still inside the frozen shell of her hand. What would Clara find inside her heart, if she had a chance to look in there?

Somewhere in the darkness, a voice laughed.

* * *

At first it was just headaches, awful arches of pain that lanced across her forehead in the distinct shape and feel of a band clamped too tight. Then it became nausea, horrible roils of sickness that moved outward from her belly to all parts of her body.

"Exhaustion and a possible food allergy," the one doctor said, a man of indiscernible age and average looks. In her delirium Clara wasn't even sure he had a face. He wrote out instructions for Clara to follow and gave her a perfunctory once-over before sending her on her way. "Get plenty of rest, miss. See if a friend can come over to play nurse for a while, yeah?"

"Not a nurse. A Doctor." But he didn't seemed to understand that, and Clara didn't have the energy to explain.

As she walked with all the strength left in her back to her car, stopping for long periods to catch her breath and press her hand - so cold, so pale, it was a thing nearly dead - against her pounding heart, Clara became aware of a sudden arching shadow. She turned to look at it and felt pain lance through her forehead and across her scalp in a bolt of agony. It was hard to see, but she could recognize that voice anywhere. Even if she could no longer hear it in her dreams.

"I've got you, Clara." His hand was on her shoulder and then it was moving down to grasp one of her own - not the frozen hand, but the other. The one that was still alive. Clara squinted through the fog moving over her eyes, a haze brought on by another swell of pain, and she thought she ought to have said something. Maybe smiled at least, or said something like a thank you.

What came out instead was the truth.

"Cold. So cold, Doctor. Doctor, I'm..."

"Here," the Doctor said, not quite finishing her statement as he was supplying another answer for it. His own answer, the truth as he saw it. "You're right here, Clara. I've got you." The Doctor slung a long, thin arm around Clara's shoulders, the touch somehow light and weightless and yet the only thing as close to an anchor as she'd ever get, and held her close. She could have said thank you then, but all that came out were the tears, pale blue and bloodless, the same color as his eyes.

They fell down her cheeks and landed on the ground like icicles, shattered like glass.

"What's happened? Tell me - what's wrong?"

"Bad dream," was all she could manage to say. They were moving, though Clara wasn't sure where or how or even why, why he thought that she wouldn't wanted to have stood utterly still, untouched by time or life or the passage of anything else that would take her away from the shard of comfort she had finally found, that he had finally been strong enough to give. "Alone, in the dark. Cold. So cold. Doctor, I'm _freezing._"

His words were mechanical, however softly delivered they might have been. "It's all right, Clara. I've got you now."

And she wanted to believe him - in that shuddering red gem that was her tiny, shriveling heart, Clara _did_ believe him.

She didn't understand why she was shaking her head no.

* * *

It hurt to be near her. It hurt to be away from her. It hurt, period. As it always did, as it always would. The heart was hysterical, unreliable, and thoroughly irremediable. And that went double for Time Lords.

The Doctor could only watch over her for so long before the anger turned into a need, and the need became a full, proper ache to do... _something_. To do what was right - whatever that meant. To do what she deserved - which was a list almost innumerable. He watched her closely in silence, her left hand locked in his as he had once done with an old face and another set of hearts, ones not frozen and locked and thrown away to rot. They had a value then. The Doctor held on so tight that he could feel her bones beneath his grasp, but not once had she complained that it hurt.

He supposed that's because it paled in comparison to how much everything else did.

"I'll make it right," he said, knowing she couldn't hear him, knowing that words were like petals on the wind, and promises even worse. So fragile, so ineffective. But so necessary all the same. "I'll show you, Clara. I'll make this right."

It hurt to leave her. It hurt to stay with her. It hurt, period. But the Doctor had long ago realized, and only recently remembered, that there was only one choice to make whenever you get a wound: accept it, embrace it. Wounds hurt all the less if you can look at them and see their beauty.

You might as well give it a shot, since some are so deep they'll never fade. And who would want to spend the rest of their lives full of bitterness for what they couldn't change?

"Back so soon? And alone?"

The Doctor thought it would be a bit too dramatic if he flipped the whole table over, so he settled instead for kicking a chair aside and settling down into the one closest to the other alien. He quickly decided it wouldn't be right to break anything else - certainly not that fine porcelain tea set. Though it was so easy to picture how it would break apart and shrieked upon impact with the floor, shattering and scattering like tears. Like Clara's tears, frozen and shining and each one like a knife inside a wound just about to close.

"Give it back," the Doctor said, placing his hands on the table and leaning forward to glare at the diamond red eyes and the withering husk of a face.

"Don't know what you mean," the Seeleech said.

"I didn't ask what you know. I don't remember asking a question at all. It was a very simple, straight-forward directive. Give it back."

"Why? Want it all for yourself? Isn't that greedy?"

The Doctor showed his teeth. It wasn't a smile, but something crueler, something worse, something that, when couple with the glint in his eyes and the softness of his voice, could fill even a dead heart with dread. "I'm not being greedy. I'm doing what's right."

The Seeleech attempted a laugh at this. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "What's _right_? Sure you know what that is?"

_You should know better by now, Doctor._

"I'm starting to," the Doctor said, before picking up the iron tea pot and smashing it across the other alien's face.

It went on like this for some time, until the Doctor got the answer he wanted, then the plea he wanted, and then the prize Clara deserved. He made sure to wash his hands before taking it back. That, at least, seemed the right thing to do.

* * *

In Clara's dream, she was in the darkness again, only this time when she reached inside her chest to find the little red gem, she found nothing but black ash and rot. She could have cried, but her eyes froze shut each time a tear welled up, and only the glitter of crystals fell off every lash, cutting little scratches over her cheek that stung and promised blood.

_The human heart, like the love it sheds, is an infernal device, just about indestructible_. But no, that last word was wrong. Not indestructible - irreplaceable.

And it was gone now, and Clara hadn't the faintest idea where.

The sparks that fell around her in the darkness glowed just a bit brighter this time. She held out her hands, the frozen one unable to turn over, but it reflected the light until it seemed as if a sun were alive inside her grasp. She smiled at this, just a little bit. For the first time in days, she felt warm again. Warm, alive, whole.

And just like that, the sun was gone. But the warmth remained behind.

It was faint at first, a sort of odd tingle that made her frozen hand twitch inside its shell. But then the twitch became a jolt, and the jolt became a spasm, and soon there were cracks moving all along the surface of the crystal scab. Her fingers stretched and bent, over and over again, a force of habit as ingrained as the instinct to fight off that grim necessity of pain, and were soon free. Clara made a fist and the rest of the shell fell away, scattering and shattering into so much dust at her feet.

Only her heart was still missing. Clara pressed both hands to the empty space inside her chest, closed her eyes, and waited.

_For what?_ a cold voice hissed, crawling out from the back of her mind.

_I don't know,_ she said, so casual, almost dismissively so. _For... something, I guess._

_For nothing_, it insisted. _What's the point if you don't even know? Why waste your time?_

_Why not? Couldn't hurt worse than this._

That was the truth, wasn't it? She was alone, which was just as bad if not worse than being lost. She was heartless, or at the very least trying to operate without one, which wasn't quite the same. The first was a choice to suppress what was there. The other was a choice to work around the lack.

Clara opened her eyes. It was easier to face the dark when she had this thought in mind. The little sparks around her had grown into larger, brighter lights, like stars that burned and flew and crashed and fell, but could not hurt her, did not want to do anything like that at all. She held out her hands to touch one, the palest, the thinnest. It seemed sad somehow, and lonelier than most. From out of the little glimmer of light, weaker than any distant, fading star, Clara heard a familiar voice calling out to her.

She tilted her head and reached out for the spark once more. She heard the voice again.

"Doctor?" she asked, watching the little light move closer to her touch but try to skirt around every attempt she made to grasp it close. A maddening dance.

"I'm here, Clara," the voice continued to say. "Right here. And I've brought some company, too."

Clara frowned. Not that he could see - he wasn't there in the dream at all, just his voice, just his warmth, just the weight of him filling up every dark, cold space.

"Keep a tight hold on it this time, alright? Matter of fact, we can both look after it. It'd be a nice burden to share, yeah?"

She didn't understand, but in a few seconds she didn't have to. The empty shell in her chest was starting to heal, erasing every trace of the black rot and the nest of needles and scars and pain that had once housed a gem so rare as to be sought by even a blind, wretched beast - as well as the Seeleech. Clara put her hands to the scar that was fading, to the wound that was no longer aching, and she didn't have to dig down deeper to know that her heart was back to where it ought to have been. She could feel it alive inside her chest, could feel the blood pulsing through her, along with the light and the heat and the heaviness of every second gone, every second to come, and all that dark space in between.

Just about indestructible. That sounded about right.

A smile moved over her lips, soft and yet somehow cold, like the kiss of ice. No different from the small bite of pain that comes with winter, but not an ache meant to worry about. Such pain can't last under light of a love like the Sun's heat: distant, yet ever present.

* * *

The Doctor was sitting in a chair he'd dragged over next to her bed, though he was quick to step out of it once Clara woke up. He knelt on the floor instead, hovering over her with an expression at war with its own need to show concern.

"Why... did you bring me there?" Clara asked when some of her strength had returned enough to grant her a voice. Her eyes were blurry, the vision vague, but she could see some small sparks of life and light just beyond the haze. The Doctor's face was there, as were his eyes, bearing an unusually bright shine. Life and light and something like - _should I say it?_ - love.

"Because you were with me, and I didn't want to go alone." But that wasn't all. The Doctor dug for the words and found them, even if he loathed having to say them. "Because they asked for me to come, and I couldn't – I wouldn't go alone. Because they asked for my help and I thought it was possible, I really did, Clara. But I thought I could get through it as long as you were there. I didn't want to go alone," he said again, the most damning and glaring part of the confession. "I didn't want to go."

"Scared?" she asked, smirking just a little, teasing just a bit, and joking only in part.

The Doctor ran his fingers through Clara's hair, pushing it off her face. "Usually always, yes."

She lifted an arm - the right arm, with the once frozen hand - and pulled him down into an awkward, one-armed hug. The Doctor tensed and shifted to find his balance, learning fast that the only pocket of air he could find in this position was if he turned his head so that he was facing her neck.

"That hurts a bit, you know," he said after a minute had passed.

Clara waited to see if he'd move back or squirm in her grasp, but another minute passed and he'd done neither. So she only held on tighter, and gave his cheek a soft, warm kiss.

Some pain you exchange for another, and some you endure because the alternative is far worse.


End file.
